Monday, February 27, 2017

Everyone is talking about Moonlight's big victory at the Oscars last night, as well they should. However, I noticed that something isn't being said which NEEDS to be said. Therefore, let me give my two cents with a personal letter to the motion picture and it's makers:

To the director and producers of Moonlight,

Thank you so much for making this movie. As a gay black man, it has been difficult to see three-dimensional characters on television and the big screen who are just like me. I was so desperate, I would look at old Soul Train clips on youtube and make guesses about the dancers. Or the episode of New York Undercover featuring Joe Morton a former boxer who became a drag queen.

Your victory and continued success is not only a triumph for yourselves, but also to the African-American lgbt community at large. I hope that Moonlight will be the first in a long line of films which spotlights accurate African-American lgbt portrayals and storylines.

Because goodness knows, we need it. Seriously, we have come a long way and I feel that your film is a reward for all of the times lgbts of color have had to sit through some of the most disgusting, nauseating, stomach-churning, religion -questioning ( I think you know where I'm going with this) portrayals of us created by our own people, i.e. African-Americans.

I mean there's just so many

oversexed bisexuals, self-hating black gay men in prison who commit suicide so that their mothers won't find out their orientation, butchy rape enthusiast lesbians, gay black male plane stewards with purple lip gloss, invisible high school characters who likes to wear flesh toned hot pants during prison visits, drooling gay men who get hot and bothered over seeing men hanging over hospital beds while wearing bloody diapers, hairdressers named Peaches, devious transgender women, specials on the "downlow," fake-ass authors who publish books on "how to spot if your boyfriend is gay," phony tv shows which offer a crusty, dried up olive branch in the form of AIDS education episodes between the mocking, and above all, sermonizing by certain gospel music programs featuring certain singers who happen to be gayer than a giant statue of Judy Garland

that I can take seeing before I get the desire to pull out my razor.

Granted, my comments are not meant to speak against the lgbts of color who don't fit the supposed norms because we are all God's children There is nothing wrong with effeminate gay men or butch lesbians. Nor is there anything wrong with sex in general. It's just that I am so happy to see anything featuring us as the main subject and the center of attention rather than a side character who is treated like a condiment.

Because, honestly speaking, I am running out of episodes of Soul Train to watch.

Editor's note - Moonlight's victory last night for 'Best Picture' at the Oscars was huge; so huge in fact that it's going to take a while for me to properly conceptualize how I feel about it. It was wild enough to finally see a movie which speaks to the experience of being a black gay man in America. Watching as said movie take a historical nod was just a bit more moving than I realized.

Blackwell

The lgbt community can't afford to let our guards down for even a minute during this Trump Administration. While he has yet to sign any anti-lgbt 'religious liberty' executive order, an official of his transition team, who is also a member of the anti-lgbt hate group the Family Research Council, told noted journalist Michelangelo Signorile that the executive order is coming:

Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, who has served as domestic policy chair of President Donald Trump’s transition team, told (Signorile) in an interview on SiriusXM Progress that the controversial “religious freedom” order that leaked to the press a few weeks ago is very much on the way, even though White House officials had played it down.

According to Signorile, the worst is yet to come:

. . . Blackwell, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council (deemed an anti-LGBTQ hate group
by the Southern Policy Law Center), said in our interview at the
Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) over the weekend that
the order is far from dead. He also confirmed that the former director
of Family Research Council’s Center for Religious Liberty, Ken
Klukowski, had “actually structured” the draft order as a legal advisor
to Trump’s transition team. Klukowski, who is now a senior attorney at the Liberty First Institute and a Breitbart contributor,
is one of the lawyers “in the process of redrafting it,” Blackwell
said, hinting that the original order may have been perceived as being
too vulnerable to a legal challenge.

“In the final analysis, what
we want is an executive order that will meet the scrutiny of the
judicial process,” he explained. “If there is no executive order, that
will disappoint [social conservatives]. But a good executive order will
not. So we’re still in the process.” Blackwell envisions the
“anchor concept” of the order as one that will allow people with
devoutly religious beliefs to turn away LGBTQ people in the course of
business.

“I think small business
owners who hold a religious belief that believes that traditional
marriage is between one man and one woman should not have their
religious liberty trampled upon,” he explained. “I would imagine that
that will be, strongly and clearly, the anchor concept [of the order].”
(In an interview with me at the Republican National Convention in 2008,
Blackwell had explained
that he doesn’t view LGBTQ people as a class of people who are
discriminated against, but rather sees homosexuality as a “compulsion
that can contained, repressed or changed.”)

To recap - according to a member of the anti-lgbt hate group the Family Research Council, who is also working with the Trump Administration, a homophobic executive order will be forthcoming. And this order is being worked on by others connected to FRC to ensure that lgbts can't win in the courts should, or rather, when it is challenged.

Maybe it's just me, but this sounds like things are going to be "hopping" before the year is out.

About Me

Alvin McEwen is 46-year-old African-American gay man who resides in Columbia, SC.
McEwen's blog, Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters, and writings have been mentioned by Americablog.com, Goodasyou.org, People for the American Way, PageOneQ.com, The Washington Post, Raw Story, The Advocate, Media Matters for America, Crooksandliars.com, Thinkprogress.org, Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, Melissa Harris-Perry, The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, Newsweek, The Daily Beast, The Washington Blade, and Foxnews.com.
In addition, he is also a past contributor to Pam's House Blend,Justice For All, LGBTQ Nation, and Alternet.org. He is a present contributor to the Daily Kos and the Huffington Post,
He is the 2007 recipient of the Harriet Daniels Hancock Volunteer of the Year Award and the 2010 recipient of the Order of the Pink Palmetto from the SC Pride Movement as well as the 2009 recipient of the Audre Lorde/James Baldwin Civil Rights Activist Award from SC Black Pride. In addition, he is a three-time nominee of the Ed Madden Media Advocacy Award from SC Pride.